Can Quit Reading . . .

 . . . Thomas Mann.

I'm sure you have writers that you can't quit reading. Some writers have millions of readers, and some have few. Some of those writers are deliberately writing for millions while others are writing for the focused few.

I have my lifelong fascinations. Today, in the unusual and lovely cold of a Georgia morning, I'll be reading The Magic Mountain, one of my favorite novels, and if there's a novel better suited to a cold day, I don't know of it.

Our obsessions with certain writers come about, perhaps, because deep down we're like those writers, sometimes without knowing it. We love the same things. We have the same view of the world. We love passionately some of the same things.

I grew up outside, and that predisposes me to like Thoreau and William Bartram. I love reading about composers so that, and many other things, links me with Mann. Sometimes it's less an important overriding idea than a place--maybe you love Charleston and so love books set in the Low Country.

So, a cold day, a fireplace day, a Thomas Mann day. Lovely.